Burying the Lede
by mosylu
Summary: Iris is trying to be a good, supportive friend and hear all about the new woman Barry's in love with, but it's awfully hard when she wishes it were her. AU


(A/N): Because apparently I can't stay away from this high-school teacher AU world. This actually takes place a few years before the other two, so some characters are different or missing.

* * *

The final bell shrilled. As if they had a hive mind, the students leapt out of their chairs and started swarming for the door. "Remember!" Iris West called over the chatter. "Monday! I want every one of those articles back, within the word limits, and if I see an adverb, I will kill it with fire!"

She gestured at one of them. "Felicity, a moment?"

The freshman paused by her desk. She was big-eyed and shy, but showed signs of being whip-smart once she got past all that and grew into herself a little. "Yes, Ms. West? You got my article, right? I emailed it at lunch."

"I did. I want you to re-write it. From the ground up."

Felicity's face fell. "But - "

"Three thousand words - " A thousand more than she'd asked for. " - on how cute Mr. Allen is do not constitute a staff profile, okay?"

"I said stuff!" Felicity protested. "I said, he has a BA in chemistry and he grew up here in Central City with his parents and - and besides, don't you think he's cute?"

Iris did, actually. But - "That's not the point, Felicity. Try actually talking to him. You'll find that works."

Felicity's eyes went wide. "Oh."

"Come on. I know you want to concentrate on science. It's good to get to know the science faculty. And Mr. Allen really is very easy to talk to." She should know. She'd been talking to him nonstop for two years.

Felicity drooped. "But you want them back by Monday."

"I'll give you an extension until Tuesday, considering I'm asking you for a full rewrite and not just an editing pass."

Felicity didn't look entirely cheered by this. "Okay," she mumbled.

"Yes, I am a heartless beast. That's what editors are for. If you go right now, you might be able to catch him in his room. Have a good weekend, Felicity."

"You too, Ms. West."

Iris rolled her shoulders. Another week down, and her hopes of actually rebuilding the student newspaper into something that might be recognizable in the twenty-first century were looking ever more shaky. Most of the kids were taking her seventh-period journalism class to fill the English requirement, and weren't interested in who, what, when, where, or how except as it pertained to Facebook.

"Nope," she said aloud. "Not the proper attitude, Iris West!"

She _was_ going to revive the newspaper, and she _was_ going to recruit and train excellent student journalists, and she was _not_ going to let the yearbook drive her crazy. (But seriously, _Starlines_? Who thought that made sense?)

"While I'm doing all that," she muttered, "I also will _not_ pine over Barry Allen."

That was going to be the hardest affirmation to keep.

The chemistry teacher was cute and fun and funny, in an adorably nerdy sort of way. They'd started work the same day, two years before, and become friends almost instantly. She felt like she'd known him forever. Although science and English faculty generally didn't cross paths in a school as big as Kreisburg High, at least one of them was always rambling through the building to see the other during the day, and if they didn't eat lunch together, there was a good reason why.

Romantically, though? The timing always seemed to be wrong. For the past two years, one or both of them had always been in a relationship with somebody else. Iris had been single for the past three months, but Barry had been dating Linda Park for the past four.

For some reason, Iris was particularly picky right now. Every date she had seemed to be terrible, or just boring. Every guy who offered to buy her a drink in a bar seemed as bland as paste. She hadn't had one single second date since she'd broken up with Eddie.

She knew the problem. The problem was that none of them were Barry Allen.

Iris wished she could hate Linda, but the PE teacher was a friend, too, and really, if Barry had to be with somebody else, better it was with someone as awesome as Linda … right?

She checked her phone. Barry hadn't texted her at all - he'd been weirdly silent this week - but Linda had. _U free?_

 _Cleaning up my room,_ she texted back, and stuck her phone in her pocket as she moved around the room, shoving chairs back into place, picking up scraps of paper and an abandoned pencil.

"We do have janitors," Linda commented from the doorway.

Iris shrugged. She liked fussing over her room. "What's up?" She knew Linda only had a short time in between the final bell and the start of the girl's swim team practice.

"Just wanted your opinion on my outfit." Linda caught her looking at the jeans and Harvard t-shirt she wore. "Not this." She took her phone out, tapped a few buttons, and showed her a dress on a website. "This. New, I just got the delivery yesterday. It was more expensive than I was really planning on, so I'm waffling over whether to return it or wear it tonight."

"Don't return it," Iris ordered. "That would be a crime against nature. You look amazing in this color."

"Yeah?"

"Of course. You should wear your green earrings with it. You're going out tonight?"

"Mhm."

"Where's Barry taking you?"

"Oh." Linda's eyes widened. "He didn't tell you?"

"What?"

"We broke up."

"Oh," Iris said, as her heart thudded in her chest. "I - no. He didn't say."

"Last Saturday."

"Wow. I'm sorry. Are you okay, Linda?"

"It was a mutual decision and a long time coming, trust me. I'm fine. And I think he's fine, too. I think he kind of has a thing for somebody else."

Iris's heart stopped thudding and sank entirely. Of course. Of course he did. She smiled. Her cheeks seemed to strain with effort. "Well, whoever it is, she's a lucky girl."

"I'm really surprised he didn't tell you," Linda said. "I mean, you guys are usually so in tune."

"Yeah, it is strange. Maybe he felt weird because we're friends."

Linda shrugged. "So … you want to come out with us tonight? Girls' night. I would have invited you earlier but I was pretty sure you'd be doing something."

Iris glanced at her desk, stacked high with fat manila folders, one for each period. "Of course I am, I'm grading papers." She grinned. "Sure thing. Just give me when and where."

"I'll text you. But if that's the time, I'd better go before they start drowning freshmen." Linda dashed off.

Iris sat down and made a spirited attempt at checking her email. But her brain seemed to be scattered to all corners of the room, like a bag of dropped marbles. She found herself reading the email from the school librarian about the book fair three times without retaining one word.

She picked up her phone and stared at it. Then she started a text.

 _Hey, I just heard about you and Linda. Why didn't you tell me?_

Accusatory much? She deleted the second sentence.

 _Are you okay?_

But she'd said he was.

 _Want to talk?_

If he'd wanted to talk, he would have said something by now.

 _Want to drown your sorrows? I'll be your DD._

 _Who is this new girl and how do I wipe her from your mind?_

 _Is your floor clean? Because I'm planning to throw myself at your feet._

 _Let's go put gas in your car, and we can be in Vegas by morning._

Delete, delete, _delete,_ DELETE. She slapped her phone face down on her desk and rubbed her eyes.

"Hey."

Her head jolted up so fast she heard something in her neck creak. Rubbing it, she said, "Hi!" Wow. She modulated her tone to something lower than a dog whistle. "How are you?"

Barry shrugged, reaching up to hook his hands around the top of the door frame and leaning into the room with his body arched like a bow. Really, he was like one of the kids sometimes. Iris tried not to notice how the stretch emphasized the ridiculous length of his lanky body. When they'd first met, she'd asked him if he was a runner, because his legs were so long.

His friend had about fallen out of his chair laughing. "The only running Barry ever did was late to class."

Barry's ears had turned pink and he'd aimed a swat at Cisco, who'd ducked. "No, nope, not really," he'd said.

Funny thing was, he'd started running about two months later and he was talking about doing a marathon next year.

"I missed you at lunch," she said, and suppressed a wince at how needy that sounded. But she had.

"You did?"

"Yeah, of course. You missed Cisco's dramatic interpretation of Mark Mardon protesting his little brother's grade."

Barry rolled his eyes. "Oh, I heard it later. If Clyde keeps sending Mark in to fight his battles, he's gonna get an awfully rude awakening some day." He'd had the kid for chem the previous year, and swore he was going grey by Christmas. Iris had ruffled his short hair and told him no, he looked just as boyishly handsome as he always did.

He let go of the door frame and ambled into the room. He grabbed the chair by her desk, swung it around to straddle backwards, and folded his arms over the back. "So, hey, um - "

"So, are you and Cisco hanging out tonight?" she interrupted, fussing around with her computer. She could smell his clean shampoo smell and had to do something with her hands so she wouldn't grab his collar and haul herself into his lap.

"No, he's got a date. With _Lisa_."

"Ugh."

They made faces at each other. They both hated Cisco's new girlfriend, but recognized that their friend was blinded by love. Well … lust. About all they could do was prepare sandbags and alcohol for the inevitable crash, and hope it didn't take too long in coming.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Girls' night with Linda." She bit her lip. "Is that weird? She told me you broke up. Are you okay?"

He shrugged, tracing the grain of the wood on the chair back with one fingertip. "It was mutual. It was just a summer thing anyway. Probably we should have ended things awhile ago, but … "

"Still," she said, putting her hand over his. "I'm sorry."

He stared at their hands for a moment, then started to turn his hand palm up. Before he could complete the motion, she pulled away. "Anyway, she said that you might have a thing for someone else."

"She did?" He started blushing, pink crawling up his neck and tinting his ears. "Wha-what'd she say?"

"Just that, and why didn't I hear about it until now?" She shook her finger at him. "Someone's keeping secrets."

"Ha. Yeah."

"So, spill. Who is she?"

He looked at her for several minutes, then redirected his attention to the chair back. "Um. Well. I've known her for a couple of years now."

"Uh-huh, okay, so this isn't a repeat of Becky Cooper that you met in the bar."

"No, this is not another Beck-y Coo-per." He mocked her pronunciation as he always did, although Iris always felt like telling him he was lucky she wasn't pronouncing it Beelzebub. Becky had been a nightmare, honestly. "This person is actually a really good friend."

"Well, that's good!" she chirped, racking her brains for who he might mean. Obviously not Linda. Patty, maybe? Although she'd always thought Patty was just his slightly too perky next-door neighbor. Oh, god, what if it was someone she didn't know? Was it possible she didn't know all his friends?

She hated that thought. _Hated it._

"What's she like?"

"She's incredibly smart, and passionate about what she does. She just throws herself into things three hundred percent. People, too. She's so loving and loyal to her friends and her family. Like, they're so, so lucky to have her in their life. And she's beautiful. She has the most expressive eyes, and I know it's cliche, but seriously, her smile could light up a room."

Oh, fuck, he was in love with a cross between Miss America and Mother Teresa. And he was really in love, she could see it in his eyes. Oh, god, this was it. She could never compete with this. "Wow. Why didn't you snap her up before?"

"I don't know, I guess I didn't realize how special she was to me until recently. I'd been having a really bad day, and she walked in the room and I thought, _There you are. Now everything's okay again._ " He shrugged. "And I knew."

Iris started fiddling with her folders, opening them up and tapping all the student essays into alignment. The printed words began to waver at the edges. Just let her get through this and out of the building and into her car and she could cry all the way home. All night. Maybe all weekend. Not an unreasonable reaction to Barry Allen slipping through your fingers.

 _Just … not now, okay?_ she begged her tear ducts. Not in front of him. "Wow. Well. She sounds amazing."

Barry was silent for a moment. She got the feeling he was trying to see her face, but she turned it away under the pretense of packing the folders into her bag. "You haven't asked me what she does," he said finally.

Okay, _what?_ What kind of sadism was this? Iris tried to make a joke. "All this and she has a job, too?"

"Yeah, she does. One she loves. One she's good at. She's a high-school teacher."

Something inside Iris threw its head back and howled at the heavens: _OH HELL NO._ All that perfection and she had to be in their profession, too? There wasn't one single thing that Iris could pride herself on? She couldn't even say, _You may have Barry Allen, but I can wrangle a roomful of hormonal teenagers six times a day. Top that, bitch!_

The universe hated her. It was just that simple.

"She teaches English," Barry said. "But her real love is journalism."

Iris's hands froze in the act of grabbing the last folder. She stared at her own chipping nail polish for a moment and felt the world shift and flex and finally settle into place around her, a completely new configuration that felt more right than anything ever had before.

She turned her head. Barry was watching her, gnawing on the inside of his cheek, the strain showing around his eyes. "You know," she said, "that's called burying the lede."

Some of the strain eased. "Is that bad?"

"Pretty bad, yeah. Why don't you try again? And this time, keep in mind: who, what, when, where, and how."

He took a deep breath. "Okay. Who - is you. Iris West. What - is that I love you."

All the breath slid out of her lungs.

"When and where. I think I started falling the minute I sat down next to you in the teacher's lounge during orientation and you warned me off the blueberry muffins. But I didn't figure out I'd hit the ground until last week. And how?" He spread his hands. "I have no idea how I found you. I just know it's a miracle that I did."

"A very slow miracle," she said. "Two years."

"Well, Cisco warned you, I run late for everything." He smiled, and it trembled, and she thought, _Oh. This is just as scary for him._ "Better?"

"Much," she said. "So much." She grabbed his hands, and they curled around hers.

He let out his breath and slumped to rest his forehead against their tangled fingers. His back heaved for a second, then he looked up. "So, just to be clear - ?"

A laugh caught in her throat. "I love you, too." She pulled one hand free and put it to his face, feeling it crease up under her palm with the force of his grin. "I love you so much, and I'm so mad it took me this long to figure it out, and also this - " She leaned over and kissed him.

He kissed her back, fingers clenching around hers.

Some time later, a gasp from the doorway forced them apart. Iris looked up to see Felicity, mouth hanging open, staring at them. "Ms. West? _Mr. Allen?_ " she squeaked.

"Um," Iris said.

"Hi," Barry said feebly, waving a little.

She made another squeaking noise and fled, pulling out her phone.

"Oh my god," Iris said, sagging against Barry's shoulder. "The entire student body will know about this in half an hour. Forty-five minutes, tops."

"Do you care?" he asked, grinning.

She thought about it. "No." And she kissed him again.

FINIS


End file.
